Hello Writing Excuses Folks!

The Writing Excuses Conference and Retreat 2019 is September 13 – September 22, which is FOUR MONTHS AWAY! We’d love for you to join us, and to sweeten the pot, AN ANNOUNCEMENT.

WXR MYSTERY INSTRUCTOR

We’re delighted to announce that Cory Doctorow is our Mystery Instructor this year!

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and the author of RADICALIZED and WALKAWAY, science fiction for adults, a YA graphic novel called IN REAL LIFE, the nonfiction business book INFORMATION DOESN’T WANT TO BE FREE, and young adult novels like HOMELAND, PIRATE CINEMA and LITTLE BROTHER and novels for adults like RAPTURE OF THE NERDS and MAKERS. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of South Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

We look forward to having him join us on our floating writing conference!

REGISTRATION AND NEW CABINS

There’s still time to register and we have been able to add more cabins! You know how excellent this conference is, so it’s no surprise to you that they have been going fast this year. Come join us again, and tell your friends, writers, family members, anyone who might enjoy a writing conference and retreat on a cruise ship (so, most people?). We have some exciting new things, like Costume Karaoke (optional!), punch cards for family members to attend some classes, and some surprises and would love to see you there!

Register here!

September will be here soon and cabins are running out quickly. Come learn from Mary Robinette, Dan, Howard, Brandon (on land) and many other excellent guests all on a CRUISE SHIP on the Caribbean!

Have any questions? Email us at writingexcusesevents@gmail.com.

We are delighted to report that the 2019 scholarship winners have been selected!

This is a long process that we take great care with; the applicants send us a huge submission packet, complete with writing samples, letters of recommendation, and a personal essay, and each one of those is reviewed in detail by two different juries. If anyone on the jury comes across a name they know in real life, we randomize it and anonymize it and send it off to someone else to be reviewed by them instead, to keep things as fair and above-board as we possibly can.

All of the applicants were wonderful, and we loved a lot of the samples they sent us, but after a careful review and some painful decisions we’ve selected four worthy recipients:

The 2019 Out of Excuses Scholarships:

Caitlin Jacobs
Petronella Wagner

The 2019 Carl Brandon Scholarships:

Nandi Taylor
Suyi Davies Okungbowa

Huge congratulations to them, and a massive thank you to all of the other applicants. You are all amazing, and we wish you the absolute best of luck in your writing careers.